


Roommate Blues

by Sholio



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, POV Outsider, Post-Season/Series 02, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-12
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-11-02 03:36:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20609069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Amy's roommate thinks that Amy is weird, but pretty normal ... at least until Amy brings home an injured mystery man. Post-S2 outside POV.





	Roommate Blues

**Author's Note:**

> Written for imagineandimagine in the Daredevil & Defenders Exchange 2019. Thank you so much to [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/) for the plot brainstorming and lightning-quick beta!

It made Marisol _so_ nervous, advertising on Craigslist for a roommate. You could get any kind of people that way! You could get _serial killers!_

But she had to. Her roommate had moved out halfway through the semester, and there was no way she could afford a nice two-bedroom apartment, convenient to the college with a parking space and everything, on what she made at the coffee shop, even with her student aid.

And Amy seemed nice, though a little weird. She was from a small town in the Midwest, she said, and she'd moved to Jacksonville to attend diving school. So she wasn't just some drifter, even if all she had with her was a scrungy-looking backpack. And she seemed polite and responsible enough, and she could pay for two months' rent and her half of the deposit all at once. And she was over 21; she showed Marisol her ID like she thought she needed to prove it. Amy Hendrix, it said, and boy, she did _not_ look 22. Poor girl, Marisol thought, probably get carded 'til she was 40.

But she kept her side of the apartment clean, in fact so clean it seemed like she was hardly ever there; she spent most of her time in her room, coming out late at night to microwave some ramen or whatever. She didn't really have a lot of stuff. Marisol peeked into her room one time, one of the rare instances the door was open, and it looked exactly like it had when she moved in, nothing up on the walls, just the bed and nightstand that had come with the place, and if Marisol didn't know any better she'd say it looked like Amy was still living out of that backpack, like she couldn't even be bothered to unpack.

But she had plenty of money, and always paid the rent on time. Marisol wondered nervously if maybe she was a drug dealer, but if so she was a very quiet, polite one, and she didn't have late parties or leave underwear and used condoms in the bathroom like Brittany used to. She was just kind of a nerd, very obviously a shy Midwest girl who wasn't used to a place the size of Jacksonville. Marisol had to _tell_ her who the Gators were, which was fifty shades of wrong! She'd never even been to a tailgate party! That was even more wrong; didn't they have those in the Midwest? Marisol dragged her to a couple, but she didn't really seem to enjoy herself, so Marisol eventually quit trying.

So they weren't going to be BFFs, but that was okay. Brittany had been a super fun party-loving extrovert and then she'd dropped out and left Marisol on the hook for the rent, so maybe a quiet, weird nerd who had probably never had a wild and crazy thought in her life was exactly what Marisol needed to keep _herself_ on track.

Still, Amy kept to herself so much that it was a surprise when she tapped on Marisol's door late on a Wednesday night. Marisol was sprawled out on the bed with some open books, halfheartedly studying for the philosophy midterm while idly chatting on Instagram. The knocking got through the music in her earbuds, and she popped one out and looked up to see Amy leaning in, looking nervous in that stray-cat kind of way, like she thought something would bite her if she stepped inside.

"Hey, uh, Marisol? Can I borrow your car?"

"What?" Marisol said blankly. Brittany used to borrow her hair dryer and her clothes and in one _super_ not-okay instance, her boyfriend (she'd kicked him to the curb; Mama hadn't raised an idiot) but the most Amy ever did was occasionally eat Marisol's leftovers in the shared fridge.

"Car. Your car. I need to run some errands. For, um, work tomorrow."

Marisol hadn't even realized Amy had a job. No wait, she did some kind of volunteer thing at the diving school, right? She'd mentioned it once. For a person with a boring life, Amy was really shy when it came to talking about herself. 

But she never asked for things, and Marisol had already sat up and retrieved the keys from the midst of a tangle of earrings in the shell-shaped bowl on the bedside table before realizing that maybe Amy wanted it for a late-night drug deal, or like, to have sex in because she didn't want to bring some guy back to the apartment, or something. They'd talked about it when Amy first moved in, and Marisol had said that she was fine with overnight guests but they needed to talk about it first, because she did _not_ want to walk in on anything like that one time with Brittany in the bathroom.

She sat holding the keys by the sparkly Gators key chain, swinging it back and forth, while Amy looked fidgety. "No sex in my car," she said at last. "And no smoking."

"What? God, no, of course not. I just need to drive somewhere real quick. I'll have it right back; you won't even know it was gone." Amy caught the keys when Marisol tossed them to her, and rushed off without saying another word, like she was super in a hurry or something.

Marisol got up on her knees and looked down at the apartment building's pocket-sized parking lot, where a minute later she saw Amy run over to her car and start it up. Amy pulled out without signaling and nearly sideswiped the Dumpster. Marisol winced. Midwest girl, probably hadn't ever driven in anything like Jacksonville traffic. Well, it was pretty late; there shouldn't be too much traffic on the road.

If Amy scratched her car, Marisol was _so_ going to make her pay for getting it fixed.

*

She was in bed when Amy came back, but not asleep yet, watching Netflix on her phone. It was in a quiet part of the show, so she heard the door bang a couple of times, and running water, followed by some banging around in the kitchen, and some thumping, and ... voices?

Marisol popped out her earbuds. She'd distinctly thought she heard Amy talking to somebody.

_Did_ she bring a guy back? It had sounded like a guy's voice. So help me, Marisol thought, hopping out of bed in the long T-shirt she slept in. She reached for a pair of pajama pants just in case there was some rando out there. She didn't really mind, she just wished Amy would _ask_ beforehand.

When she opened her door, Amy's bedroom door was closed with a stripe of light under it, and the bathroom light was on, the door half open. Amy was doing something at the sink.

"Hey, Amy," Marisol said, and Amy jumped, splashing water all over the place. Marisol stared. There were red smears and droplets all over the sink -- was that paint? was that _blood_ \-- and red on Amy's hands, and she seemed to be washing out one of their kitchen towels, or trying to. That was where most of the red was coming from. 

Okay, fine, this was weird and gross, but Marisol hadn't grown up with two little sisters without being an old hand at managing bloody accidents in the middle of the night. "Whoa, did you have an accident? Do you need, like, tampons or something? 'cause I have extras." 

"I, uh, yeah," Amy said, looking a little bit wild-eyed. Her hair was disheveled and there were dark stains on her sleeves and jeans, like she'd somehow gotten blood there too. "I ... yeah, yeah sure, I guess so, where do you keep them, under the sink?"

"They're in my room, I'll get them."

But when she got back, the bathroom was empty, the blood had been scrubbed up, and Amy's door was closed again. Marisol hesitantly tapped on it.

There was a sudden flurry of motion, the light went out, and then the door opened a crack. "Yeah?" Amy said. She seemed to be standing to block the door as much as possible.

"I ... um, I brought ..." Marisol held out the package.

"Thanks!" Amy said, snatching it out of her hands, and vanished again. The door clicked shut. After a minute, the light came back on again.

Okay, she totally had a guy in there. Gosh. Embarrassing. Marisol sighed and stared at the door. She was just trying to decide if it was worth trying to find out for sure or just letting it go, when the door suddenly opened again and Amy let out a little shriek when she saw Marisol standing there. She ducked out of the bedroom and closed the door quickly behind her, and they stared at each other. Amy had a trash bag in her hands.

"What are you doing!" Amy said. "I thought you were in bed!"

"Do you have a guy in there?"

"I, uh ..." Amy looked everywhere but at her. "No!"

"You totally do. It's so obvious."

Amy looked like she was about to hyperventilate. "Okay, you caught me. Sorry. _Really_ sorry. He'll be gone in the morning, I swear!"

"Okay, fine, he'd just better not be a serial killer or something," Marisol grumbled. At that, Amy looked even _more_ panicked. Poor innocent Midwest kid, she'd probably never even thought of that possibility. "Oh, hey, I need my car keys back."

"Right," Amy said. "Sorry. Here." She took them out of her pocket and shoved them at Marisol, and then she was out the door in a hurry, clutching the bag.

Marisol had a wild thought of knocking on the bedroom door, but no, that one time in the bathroom was seared into her brain and she really did _not_ want to see too much of whatever loser Amy had picked up. Probably some diving-school weirdo, she thought, bearded and hairy with the kind of tan you get from working on boats rather than sunning at the beach. She shook her head and went back into her room, then took a look out the window.

Her car was back in its spot, though parked a little crooked with the wheels over the line. _Damn it, Amy,_ she thought. The building manager was a total stickler for that, and if he saw her car halfway into someone else's space, she _would_ get a nastygram about it.

Even as she thought it, she saw Amy appear in the parking lot down below. Amy hurried out of the lobby door with a furtive look, clutching her trash bag, and ran to the Dumpster and poked it in, then hurried back to the building.

Marisol went back to bed and stubbornly put her earbuds in. She did _not_ want to hear Amy and Surfer Dude get it on. But eventually she popped the earbuds out again. She was going to have to move that car.

The apartment was quiet, though a stripe of light still showed under Amy's door. Marisol tiptoed through the living room and out the door. She felt weird and conspicuous in her sleeping shirt and pajama pants. Should've stopped to get dressed, maybe. But she just needed to move the car, and it was super late. No one was going to see.

The car was not only parked over the line; it wasn't locked. "Amy, I swear, this is the last time I let you borrow my car, ever," Marisol muttered as she opened the door.

And then she just stared. There were dark stains in the passenger seat, like someone had poured motor oil on it. That had _not_ been there before.

"What'd you do to my car, Amy?" she demanded out loud, furious. What had she done, picked up Surfer Dude after he'd been working on engines all day? She reached out to touch the stains. Her fingers came away damp and dark red under the car's dome light.

Oh shit.

That wasn't motor oil. It was blood. Just like the blood in the sink.

_Oh God,_ Marisol thought, staring at it. _My roommate IS a serial killer._

She had an awful suspicion about what was in that trash bag that Amy had put in the Dumpster. Actually, she had several awful suspicions, each worse than the last. She closed the car door and stood shivering, then padded in her slippers over to the Dumpster, because she really had to know.

She pushed up the plastic lid. There was the usual unpleasant garbage smell, and the bag that Amy had put in was pretty obvious, partly because it had just been tucked right under the lid, and partly because there was a dark stain where it had been handled.

"Oh my God, oh my God," Marisol whispered. She didn't want to look. But she needed to look. She pulled it out and knelt down and untied it right there in the parking lot.

The first thing she pulled out was a big, dark man's jacket. It was absolutely ruined. It looked like it had been slashed up and then run over, and it was soaked with sticky, half-dried blood.

There was a smell, Marisol realized, dazed with horror. A heavy, damp, metallic smell.

The jacket was mainly what was in the bag. There were also a couple of towels, equally bloodstained -- Marisol recognized one of them as her good beach towel, and was vaguely able to muster up some indignation through her horror.

She shook out the towel carefully to check for body parts. There was nothing, not even so much as a finger. Okay, that was good. -- no wait, that wasn't good at all, because her roommate was a _serial killer_ and there was a _dead body_ back up there in Amy's room, and Marisol had left her phone up in the apartment so she couldn't even call the cops from down here. 

Oh God oh God oh God oh God ...

And then she got mad.

This was _so unfair._ She was just trying to get her education degree, and her first roommate and friend since high school turned out to be a stupid dropping-out boyfriend-stealing _loser_, and her second Craigslist roommate was an _actual serial killer_ who _borrowed her car to move bodies,_ and what the actual fuck was her life, even?

Marisol was only 5'2" in her bare feet, but more than once she'd gotten up in the face of a bully who was hassling her little sisters, and this was the same feeling: a swelling, righteous anger much bigger than herself. Bristling with fury, she left the bloody bag of _serial killer stuff_ laying in the parking lot and stomped upstairs. She was going to go _right_ up there and give Amy a piece of her mind and then --

She opened the door and found the lights on in the kitchen and Amy with the refrigerator door open. "Yikes!" Amy shrieked, and dropped a carton of leftover Chinese food on the floor. _Marisol's_ carton, that she was saving for tomorrow. "Would you stop doing that, please?"

"And that's another thing!" Marisol yelled. "You always eat my leftovers!"

"Another what thing? I -- dammit -- sorry --" Amy reached for the drawer where they normally kept the dish towels and found it empty, because of course it was, because she'd used all of them for _serial killer things._ "Why aren't you asleep?" she asked, scooping spilled pork fried rice into the trash with her hands instead.

"Is there a body in there?" Marisol demanded, pointing at the closed door of Amy's bedroom.

_"What?"_

"There's blood all over my car!"

"Oh," Amy said, on her knees, looking up at Marisol. She didn't _look_ like a serial killer. She looked scared, and way younger than 22. "Oh, that. I'm really sorry about that."

"You keep saying sorry, but there's a bag of bloody clothes in the Dumpster! Other people's clothes!"

"Could you _please_ keep your voice down? Shhh!" Amy scrambled to her feet, waving her hands wildly and scattering rice around, and just then the teakettle went off with a loud whistle.

Both of them jumped, Marisol's shattered nerves shattering even worse, and that made her realize she was arguing with a maybe-serial-killer while in her pajamas. A serial killer who had a cup out with one of Marisol's own tea bags in it.

This was really too much. Next semester she was going to transfer to Tampa and live at home.

"Right, so, I'm just going to ..." Marisol gestured at her bedroom, managed not to say the words "phone" or "police", and edged quietly toward the bedroom door.

"No!" Amy gasped. She lunged in between Marisol and the bedroom door. "No -- listen, it's not what you think, I _swear._ Please, can I just explain?"

"Where did all that blood come from? Is it yours?"

"No ..."

"Did you kill someone?"

"Not -- tonight!" Amy said.

"_What?_ That's a terrible answer!"

"Listen, listen. I -- I _can't_ tell you everything, but there's a friend of mine in my room, and he's badly hurt, and --"

"So take him to a hospital! Call the police!"

"I can't!" Amy said.

"Why? Is he a serial killer?"

"What is it with you and serial killers?"

"Or a drug dealer."

"No. No, look." Amy sidled to the left, keeping an eye on Marisol, and quietly opened the door to her room. "Look, I'll show you, he's not dead and he's not in any shape to hurt anyone right now, see?"

Amy's room was still as bare of personal effects as a monk's cell, though no monk would have had dirty laundry and bloodstained dish towels flung all over the place. There was a litter of gauze wrappers and an open first-aid kit on the nightstand -- _Marisol's_ first-aid kit, that she'd bought from Walmart when she first moved away from home, and kept in the bathroom.

And there was a man in Amy's bed, asleep or unconscious or possibly dead.

Marisol tiptoed closer, curious in spite of herself. 

He was stripped to the waist, with Amy's blanket covering his legs, and sloppily, inexpertly bandaged. Every part of him she could see was covered with bandages or bruises or old scars. His head was turned to the side, so she could only see part of his face -- a craggy, bruised face, the lashes of his closed eyes lacing shadows across his prominent cheekbones.

He looked terribly dangerous.

He also looked vulnerable -- weirdly, awfully vulnerable. There was something in particular about his exposed neck, where Marisol could see a fluttering pulse ... it was like seeing an old zoo lion, scarred from its keeper's abuse, flopped with its underbelly exposed and too weak to get up.

Marisol turned to stare at Amy -- her nerdy, shy, baby-faced roommate, who was picking up bloody dish towels with singleminded calm.

"Who _is_ this guy?" Marisol whispered.

"He's a friend," Amy whispered back. "He helped me a lot. Can we talk about it in the living room? I don't want to wake him up."

"Why? Because he'll kill us?"

"No!" Amy's exasperation came through clearly, even in a whisper. "Because he's been through a lot, and he's lost a lot of blood, and he basically passed out on me earlier. And I don't think he's slept in two or three days, and he really needs it."

"Uh ... okay," Marisol whispered, and they both retreated from the bedroom and she quietly closed the door. "Er ... there's a bag of bloody clothes in the middle of the parking lot."

"I'll take care of it," Amy said, and left.

Marisol cleaned up the kitchen and made them both tea. And she kept looking at the closed bedroom door, thinking about Amy and how she never really talked about her past, she just let Marisol make guesses about it, that she never confirmed or denied. And it had worked for awhile. It was only now that Marisol realized Amy had never said anything about her parents, or named the town she used to live in, or talked about school. It was like Amy Hendrix had been born fully grown in Jacksonville a few months ago.

When Amy came back up, she took the tea like a peace offering and said quietly, "I'm glad you saw him, I guess. I thought I was going to have to sneak him in and out past you, and I didn't know how I was going to do that. I didn't even do it that well the first time." She hesitated, and there was a feral-animal wildness in her, that Marisol now realized was what she'd mistaken for shyness before. "Are you going to call the cops?"

"Not tonight," Marisol said. "I ... I just need to think about it. This guy ... he's not dangerous? _Is_ he dangerous? He _looks_ dangerous."

"Not to us," Amy said softly. "Listen, he helped me. A lot. He saved my life. He _gave_ me a life." Marisol must have looked confused, because Amy laughed a little. "I know that doesn't make much sense. I can't tell you any more, and you're probably better off not knowing."

She seemed so serious when she said it, like she was a spy or something. The crazy thing was that Marisol believed her. Or at least she believed that Amy believed it.

"So you won't tell me anything else," Marisol said.

Amy shook her head.

"Fine. I'm going to bed, then."

*

She might have drifted asleep for an hour or so, but it was still the middle of the night when she was awakened by banging and clattering out in the apartment. The toilet flushed and there was a murmur of voices. Marisol pushed herself up on her elbows and listened. The door to Amy's room closed and there were no more sounds.

Still, she couldn't go back to sleep. She rolled over and looked at her phone and thought long and hard about calling the police.

But she didn't.

She was still awake when there was a quiet tap on her door, and Amy whispered, "Marisol?"

This was followed by the door pushing quietly inward. Marisol sat up quickly and grabbed for anything in reach, which turned out to be a shoe. She held it up warningly, and then lowered it when she saw it was just Amy.

"I need your keys again," Amy whispered.

"Why?"

"I, uh ... need to do. A thing."

Marisol threw them at her. "Fine, whatever, but you're going to wash out those bloodstains."

"It'll be sparkling," Amy promised, and vanished, closing the door after her.

Marisol listened to the outer apartment door close, and then the car start up under the window and drive away. And as she sat there, a thought dawned on her slowly.

She was alone in the apartment with Mr. Dangerous.

Wow. Yay.

No _way_ she was going back to sleep now. She got up and got dressed. She didn't have morning classes on Thursdays, so she'd been planning a lazy day of sleeping in and reading her book and getting caught up on some studying, or maybe just watching the rest of _Black Mirror._

Instead, she went out and nervously tidied the bathroom, making sure all the blood was cleaned up and any stained towels were in the trash. It just seemed more sanitary that way. All the while, she kept looking at Amy's closed bedroom door.

What if he woke up?

What if Amy was wrong and he really was dangerous?

What if it was just _really, really awkward?_

Maybe it would help if she made him breakfast? Yes, she thought, that was a good idea. A hungry and injured spy-assassin-serial-killer was much more likely to be a problem than a well-fed one. If nothing else, she could throw the food in his face and run for the door.

Amy rarely cooked, but Marisol tried to eat healthy -- well, sort of -- or at least eat on a budget, which meant not eating out all the time and maybe doing better than the ramen and microwave burritos that seemed to be what Amy lived on (well, that and any of Marisol's leftovers that weren't well hidden). So she had eggs and cheese in the fridge, and bacon in the freezer, and she cooked up two omelets while asking herself why on earth she wasn't just calling the cops.

She didn't have a good answer for that.

Maybe it was Amy's desperation last night.

Maybe it was the sheer heartbreaking vulnerability -- that exposed throat, the shadow of those closed eyelashes.

She didn't know what to do. But she could at least make breakfast. She even found a tray in the back of one of the cabinets; it was technically meant for Christmas cookies and had a Santa face on it, but she arranged a plate with omelets and bacon, and a cup of tea. She almost took a small potted African violet off the windowsill and put it on the tray, but came to her senses in time.

_There's a man in there who is almost certainly some kind of murderer, who showed up in my apartment late at night covered in blood, and is somehow BFFs with my roommate. I can't believe I'm taking him breakfast in bed, but taking him breakfast in bed with a FLOWER would put this whole situation completely over the top._

Like it wasn't already.

She took a deep breath, gulped half her own cup of cooling tea as if it was whiskey, and then picked up the tray and marched, with firm resolve, to the door of Amy's room --

\-- which opened right in front of her and, tray and all, she collided with Mr. Dangerous.

Tray, tea, and breakfast all went in different directions. Marisol stood gasping in shock, with tea soaking into her jeans, staring at the apparition in front of her.

He wasn't actually as big as she was expecting. Somehow in her head he'd been blown up into a giant, hulking figure, but he was actually more like normal-person-sized: taller than her, of course (almost everyone was), but muscular in a compact way rather than a looming way. 

In the bright light of the apartment's living room, he looked even worse than he had in the semi-dark when she'd first seen him. He was still shirtless, which showed off every bruise and cut and bandage. One of his eyes was swollen almost shut. Marisol opened her mouth to ask where he was going and then took in the butt of some kind of gun stuck into the waistband of his pants, and her eyes and mouth opened wide, and stayed that way.

"Sorry, ma'am," he said. His voice was rough, a dry rasp. He looked down at the mess on the floor, with an expression of dismay that would have been funny if not for the rest of it. "That, er ... for me?"

Marisol gulped. Her nervous gaze darted to the gun again. "It ... was."

He smiled a little, in a distant, distracted way. "Sorry 'bout that. Wish I could stay to help, but I gotta go."

"Wait -- what?"

He gently moved her aside and started for the door, limping heavily.

_He means it,_ Marisol thought. Shirtless, limping, barely able to stand up, he was just going to walk out. 

She should let him. She really, really should. If the scary bad murderer guy just wanted to walk out of her life, and presumably out of Amy's, she _really_ needed to let him do it.

So she wasn't sure why she scrambled to get in front of him, blocking the door to the hallway. "Wait! Don't. Amy's not going to want you to leave."

"Amy's why I have to leave," he rasped out in that tires-on-gravel voice. "And you too. I can't be here." He had the weirdest way of talking to people, eyes darting all around like he couldn't bring himself to look at you or maybe just expected someone to attack him at any moment. Amy did that sometimes too, come to think of it.

"What do you mean? Why?"

"Not safe." He took a breath and pressed his hand to his side, where the biggest of the bandaged areas showed fresh red stains. "Shouldn't be here. _Wouldn't_ be here, but I was too out of it, didn't really know where she was taking me --"

He took another step forward and doubled over, breathing hard, catching himself on the doorframe.

Marisol struggled with herself for a moment, before moving in and helping him to the couch. He was going to bleed on it, but it would just be added to all the other mysterious and worrying stains that you got on a couch in a furnished apartment that was rented to college students.

"You can barely walk. You're going to fall facedown in the hallway, and I'll have to explain it to the neighbors." She took a breath and managed a shaky smile. "Look, at least ... sit down and have something to eat. A cup of tea. A handful of aspirin."

It was probably a measure of the shape he was in that he didn't argue, just gave her a tight, clench-jawed nod. Marisol cleaned up the mess, then divided the now-congealed omelet that she'd meant for herself in half and ran it through the microwave. She was too stressed to be that hungry anyway.

He took the plate from her with a quiet, "Thanks."

Marisol nodded, and sat nervously across from him, picking at her omelet. He was also picking at his; she could tell that he wasn't hungry, but was forcing himself to eat a few small bites.

"What's your name?" she asked abruptly. "Amy didn't mention it."

"Good for her."

"I can't just keep calling you 'hey you.'"

Quicksilver flash of a smile, there and gone. "Sure you can. Better than getting mixed up in what I'm mixed up in."

Her heart flipped over uncomfortably. "What are you mixed up in?"

"Nothing you need to worry about," he said, and shoved his fork into the solidifying mass of the omelet.

"You showed up at our apartment covered in blood!"

"Not on purpose," he said with a ghost of a smile.

There was the sudden rattle of a key in the lock. The door burst open, and Amy stumbled in and slammed the door behind her. She stood there for a moment with her back against it, looking wild-eyed.

"What?" Marisol asked, pausing with her fork halfway to her mouth, and then she looked around and realized that Mr. Dangerous was on his feet and headed for the window, limping stiffly.

"Frank!" Amy said. "We gotta get out of here."

Well, at least now Marisol knew his name.

"I told you not to bring me here," Frank snapped. "How many?"

"There's a van." Amy seemed to run out of air, then caught her breath in a great whoop and the panicked look slid away, replaced by a strange, fierce calm. "They were staking out the building when I pulled in," she went on. "Black van, just like last night. I don't think they saw me come in."

"Sure did follow you back the first time, though." He pulled out his gun and did something baffling with it that made him look like a character in a movie -- clicking moving parts, pulling things and pushing them back, all so fast Marisol could barely follow him. The fact that his hands shook didn't affect the sureness and speed of his movements.

"_Stop_ it!" Amy shot back at him, while Marisol shrank back in her chair. She was terrified of them both, all of a sudden -- this weird guy who seemed so gentle sometimes and yet had violence written all over him, and her roommate who might as well be a stranger. "I'm not going to apologize for saving your life!"

"Haven't saved it yet," Frank said, looking out the window. "And you got your roommate into the stew along with us."

"Oh." Amy turned her wide-eyed stare on Marisol. "I ... I guess that I --"

"Didn't think?" Frank said shortly. He pushed the gun back into his waistband and turned away from the window, taking short, hitching steps. "Is there a back way outta here?"

Amy swallowed. She was blinking back tears. "I -- I'm not sure. I just always go down the stairs that lead to the main lobby and the parking lot."

"There's another stairwell," Marisol said. Her voice came out as a frightened croak, but they both stopped what they were doing and paid attention to her. She cleared her throat and said more clearly, "It's around the bend in the hall and goes down to the side street."

"Good girl," Frank said. "Is that door locked?"

Marisol nodded. "Always. The building key gets you in, but people don't use that entrance much. Mostly they go in and out through the lobby."

"Good. Less likely they'll be waiting in the stairwell, then. They might not even know there's another door."

It was odd, Marisol thought: even though he still looked just as pale and shaky as he had earlier, there was a ready tenseness in him. When he'd come out of the bedroom, the main reason why she hadn't been afraid of him -- at least not as much as she felt like she really should be -- was because he'd looked like a strong wind would blow him over. But now, though he looked no stronger, she _really_ wouldn't have wanted to be the person taking him on in a fight.

Marisol cleared her throat. "If there are dangerous people down there, shouldn't we call the police?"

Neither of them answered her immediately. It was Amy who said, "We can't."

_"Why,_ for heaven's sake? That's what the police are _for!"_

"Not for us," Amy said, surreptitiously dashing at her eyes.

"Us?" Marisol said. She could definitely see Frank being wanted by the law, but what did that mean about Amy?

Frank gave a soft laugh. He was currently rummaging in the knife drawer. "Hey kid, you want to get the car, pull it around to the side door?"

Amy turned to give him a look. "Can you even do stairs right now?"

"Got up here, didn't I?"

Amy heaved a theatrical sigh and left. Leaving Marisol alone with the weirdo with the gun.

"Are you some kind of escaped convict or something?" Marisol asked.

And then she quailed when she realized she'd just said that to the guy who was stuffing all their good kitchen knives into a silicon oven mitt. But all he said was, "Those people out there, they aren't your friends. You want to end up looking like I do right now? Or worse?"

All she could do was shake her head.

"People around me, they tend to end up dead." Frank turned around, clutching his oven mitt of knives. "I don't want that to happen to you. Or her. We're getting out of here, and first chance you get, you and me are going our separate ways."

"Awesome," Marisol squeaked out. Fine with her. She just wanted this nightmare to be _over._

Frank limped out of the kitchen and over to her. Marisol shrank back. When he held out a hand, all she could do was stare at it.

"C'mon, get up, kid. Let's get going."

Hesitantly, she took his hand. He pulled her up with a single quick jerk, but kept hold of her hand, steadying her.

"It's gonna be okay," he said, and she looked at him dubiously. "I'm gonna do what I need to do to get you out of this. Okay?"

"Okay," Marisol said faintly.

*

Frank made it down the side stairs with obvious difficulty, Marisol bringing up the rear. Amy was waiting at the side door in Marisol's car. Marisol started to get into the passenger side, balked at all the dried blood, and slid into the back instead.

It was still the middle of the night; the streets were deserted. Amy did a U turn and took off down the side street.

"I don't think they saw me move the car," Amy said. "I parked in the alley." Leaning forward, Marisol saw that Amy's hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel. "Where do I go?"

"Larry's diving school," Frank said.

"It's closed for the week. He'll be out on his boat."

"Yeah, but if I know Larry, there'll be guns there. And places to hide."

"You know the weirdest people," Amy complained.

"Yeah? What's that say about you?" But his tone was playful, not harsh.

They drove in silence for a few minutes, while Marisol huddled down in the back, feeling like they'd almost forgotten about her. She could call the police, she thought. She _should_ call the police. She touched the square shape of her cell phone in her jeans pocket. But then she thought of Frank holding her hand upstairs, keeping her upright until her wobbly legs steadied, and took her hand off it again.

"Listen, kid," Frank said in the front seat. "You know, back there ..."

"I know you're pissed at me." Amy's voice shook a little.

"I don't want you getting hurt. I've watched too many people get hurt."

"So keep me safe."

"It doesn't always work out that way."

Amy let out a small sigh, and her arm moved. From where she was, Marisol saw her take his hand for a moment, then let go so she could use both hands for the steering wheel. She turned off onto a side road. The headlights raked over a long, low building.

"Not in front," Frank said, his voice a quiet rasp.

"This isn't my first rodeo, you know," Amy retorted. She pulled around behind an outbuilding.

Marisol had no idea where they were until she got out of the car and caught the smell of the sea and a faint whiff of chlorine, and then realized they must be at Amy's diving school. She'd never been here -- had occasionally wondered during some of her more fanciful speculation on her roommate, and _especially_ tonight, if the diving school even existed. Apparently it did.

It didn't look like much, a low cinderblock building in an industrial part of town, surrounded by a partial chain-link fence. There was a light on at the front of the building, a white light with the solid, cold glare of industrial-district night lighting, and nothing else.

The car door closed and Amy's feet crunched on gravel. Marisol turned around as Amy helped Frank out of the car, started to move to help too, then backed off. He was hunched over, one arm wrapped around his ribs.

"If they followed us --" Amy began.

"I didn't see headlights. You did good, kid."

They trooped around to the front of the building, staying close to the side, where the shadows were inky black. The light out front made Marisol feel exposed. She kept looking anxiously over her shoulder, jumping every time there was the sound of another car somewhere among the warehouses and closed businesses.

Was this what it was like for Amy all the time?

The door had a small sign saying DIVE LESSONS and nothing else. "You got a key?" Frank asked Amy. She shook her head.

Frank tested the door, then turned a shoulder to it and visibly braced himself.

Amy sighed and muscled past him, casually manhandling him out of her way as if he couldn't just break her in half. "As satisfying as it would be to watch you fling yourself into the door and then pass out, let's use some finesse here, why don't we?"

And with that, she went down to one knee, took out an honest-to-goodness set of _lock picks_ and got to work on the lock. Marisol's eyes bugged out of her head.

"You carry those everywhere?" Frank said.

"Sure do," Amy muttered distractedly, her tongue poking out of the side of her mouth as she probed the lock.

In the quiet of the night, the little sounds Amy was making with the lock picks sounded loud; the clunk when the door unlocked and opened was louder yet. "Voila," Amy murmured, and they went into a dark hallway. Amy relocked the door behind them. It was damp and cool in here, with a stronger smell of chlorine in the air. No one turned on the lights.

"Pool's down that way," Amy said quietly. "The office is on the far side, equipment storage down the hall. Who were you texting in the car?"

"Saw that, did you." Frank sounded quietly proud. "Just gave an old friend a heads up."

"Larry?" Amy said, then "No, Madani, right?"

They were moving on ahead. There were still no lights. Marisol hurried to catch up, and missed Frank's low reply.

"Who's after you?" she asked. 

It was almost completely dark in the hallway, but she could see the pale blur of Frank's face and bare torso turning toward her. 

"Look," she said, "I'm in this now too. I deserve to know. Who are those people? Who are _you_ people?"

"She's right," Amy said quietly. "She doesn't deserve to be kept in the dark. I know what _that_ feels like, believe me."

They came out into a large space that smelled strongly of chlorine, and by the dim light coming in through the windows, Marisol saw the flickering ripple of water. This must be the pool.

"Drug cartel," Frank said quietly. "Running their shit through Miami. Took 'em out. Still got the remains of the cartel chasing me. Good enough?"

_No,_ Marisol thought, staring at him. She still had so, _so_ many questions. Like who in the hell took on a drug cartel by themselves? Like how did Amy get mixed up in all of this?

But she never got a chance to say it, because all of a sudden Frank barked out, "Down!" and one strong hand caught Marisol's jacket and hauled her to the floor just as a sharp loud noise and flashes of light erupted from the far side of the pool.

Pieces of wall showered down on them. Marisol covered her head with her arms. Frank's hand was planted solidly in the middle of her back, Frank's shoulder half covering her. _We're being shot at,_ she thought, in an odd pocket of stillness in her mind. _There are drug dealers shooting at us._

She was going to _kill_ Amy for getting her into this.

As the gunfire died away, Frank whispered, "Stay down!" and lurched up to his knees. The gun in his hand barked sharply, once, twice, three times. There was a loud splash from the far side of the pool.

"Go, go!" Frank rasped at them. Marisol struggled to her feet, helped up by Amy. "Where's the office?"

"This way," Amy whispered back. She gave Marisol a little shake. "Are you okay?"

All Marisol could do was nod. Her teeth were chattering.

They'd just reached the end of the pool when Frank shoved them back and the gun in his hands went off again. Marisol heard a yelp from the darkness ahead.

_How is he doing this?_ she wondered, dazed, as Amy pushed her on ahead. He was like something inhuman. Like he could see in the dark, or was reading tiny cues they couldn't, small sounds and rustles, like some kind of wild forest animal.

There was a sudden explosion of fight noises in front of them, soft grunts and thumps. Marisol could only glimpse brief flashes of motion, and when Amy hustled her into another hallway, she stumbled into something yielding and unmoving down at foot level. She was suddenly glad she couldn't see.

"You can't keep doing this," Amy whispered to Frank. She let go of Marisol and moved forward. There were more little rustles; Frank's breathing was harsh and ragged in the dark.

Marisol looked back toward the pool. Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness; the block of wan light coming into the hallway from the pool room seemed almost bright, and silhouetted against it --

She tried to cry out a warning, but panic seized her throat, strangling her. And then there were hard hands on her and she was dragged back by an arm around her neck and felt something cold and hard pressed to her temple. At the same time, a flashlight speared past her shoulder, spotlighting Frank and Amy: Frank spinning around, raising the gun and pushing Amy behind him in the same movement. He squinted against the light, but didn't fire. 

There was a quick flurry of steps, flickers of motion behind Frank: Amy running on down the hall. Someone behind Marisol cursed. There were at least two people: the one holding her, and the one with the flashlight.

"That one doesn't matter," her captor snarled. "_He's_ the problem. Drop it, Castle, or this pretty girl here isn't going to be so pretty with her face blown off."

"She's no part of this." Frank kept his body angled to shield Amy's escape, blinking and squinting against the light, tilting his head as he tried to see past it. In the flashlight's harsh beam, he looked terrible, with fresh dark blood staining his bandages. But his hands were rock steady on his gun -- still raised, pointed at Marisol and her captor. "You let her go, we can talk about this."

"You deaf or just that stupid?" Marisol's captor shot back. "Put it down!"

The gun ground into her skull, and Marisol whimpered, tears blurring her vision.

"Marisol?" Frank said. "You hear my voice, sweetheart? You're gonna be okay."

"Drop it right now, Castle!"

He wasn't going to do it. There was no reason why he would. She fully expected him to shoot through her, pow and pow, just like he'd shot those guys back at the pool.

But instead he let the gun slip from his hand, until it dangled loosely by the trigger guard. "See? I'm doing it. I'm doing it. Don't hurt her." And as he said it, he stepped forward, coming toward them, squinting into the light.

_Don't,_ Marisol thought wildly, and she wasn't even sure which of them it was for: _don't shoot me, don't shoot him ..._

"Come any closer and she gets a new hole in her head! Put it down!"

"I do that and you kill both of us." Frank's voice was tight, strained; his eyes moved all around, glittering in the flashlight's glare. "Gonna need some guarantees here. I'll go with you, trade me for her, but only if you let her go --"

A gunshot went off right next to her, deafeningly loud in the hallway. Marisol let out a strangled scream. She thought she'd been shot, but it wasn't her; Frank flinched and one of his legs wobbled under him, twisted, nearly dropped him on the floor. There was fresh blood on his thigh. He kept his loose grip on the gun, the muzzle dangling.

"You think you're in charge here, Castle? You want me to prove how not-in-charge you are?" The gun ground against Marisol's temple and she tried not to cry out again.

"No. No, sir, I don't. You're in charge." But still, he took another step forward -- another hitching, limping step, leaving a trail of blood glistening dark on the floor. "You're calling the shots. You can walk out of here with me and I won't give you trouble, just let her go --"

"Hey, guys." It was Amy's voice, ringing out clearly from somewhere behind Marisol, out of sight. "You guys want to find out what a shotgun does to the human body at point blank range? Because --" Her voice cracked a little. "You're about to."

What happened next was a blur of movement Marisol couldn't follow. Frank lunged forward, and all Marisol could think to do -- half panicked instinct, half vague sense that it might help -- was go limp. She dropped in her captor's arms, and then Frank's arms moved past her in a blur, and there was an arm around her that was just as strong as the one locked around her neck an instant ago but not terrifying at all, and she was spun away and fell to the floor. Gunshots went off over her head. Someone yelled. The flashlight beam danced wildly over the wall. She heard Amy's voice, indistinct. And then it was quiet.

Marisol sat up slowly. The flashlight was lying on the floor, casting huge shadows on the walls from bodies lying like heaps of laundry.

"Marisol!" Amy's voice said, echoing in the pool room. "Marisol, where are you?"

"H - Here!" She struggled to her feet on legs that barely held her. Those last quick flashes of chaos kept spinning through her mind, settling into a coherent sequence of events: Frank striking away her captor's hand while pulling her clear, spinning her around and putting his body between her and them, pushing her to the floor. "Is ... is Frank okay?"

"Not really," Amy said, her voice tight. 

Marisol edged carefully around the bodies in the hall and stumbled out into the pool room. It was much lighter than the hallway; she could almost see, in a dim, monochrome kind of way. Amy had Frank's arm looped over her shoulders, and Frank was holding a shotgun, gripping it in a businesslike way even though he could barely stand up.

"You okay, Marisol?" Frank asked. She hadn't even realized he was fully conscious.

"Yes," she said: a simple and not particularly accurate answer for a very complex question. "Can I, uh, help?"

"Get the flashlight," Amy said, and Marisol got it and lit their way down the hall to a door standing open. Amy handed off Frank to Marisol, and used the flashlight to scope out the room. Marisol stood trembling with Frank's arm looped over her shoulders. He was heavy, and smelled like sweat and blood.

"You did good," he said. "Good thinking, dropping like that. Kept your head. Not everybody can do that."

"Th-- thanks," she managed. "I was scared out of my mind."

"Everybody is, when something like that happens."

"In, guys, in," Amy said, and closed and locked the door behind them.

They were inside a cramped, windowless office. There were filing cabinets, a desk heaped with papers, and fishing trophies on the walls. Frank leaned against the wall, and Marisol eased Frank down to the frayed, industrial carpet.

"Now what?" Amy asked. She laid the flashlight on the desk, the beam pointing at the wall, bouncing back and dimly illuminating the room.

"Now we wait for the cavalry," Frank said.

"You think she's coming?"

"Better hope so." He was sitting with his legs thrust out in front of him and teeth gritted, gripping his thigh above the fresh gunshot wound, where blood was soaking dark through the leg of his jeans.

"Shit, shit," Amy muttered. "Marisol!" Marisol jumped. "Do you see anything in here to stop the bleeding? Make a tourniquet, maybe?"

The only thing Marisol could think of was her jacket. She took it off and hesitantly pressed it to Frank's blood-soaked leg. Frank gasped aloud and then went limp, slowly slumping against the wall.

Amy cursed and hurried around the desk to drop to her knees beside them. She felt at Frank's throat for a pulse. "Stupid, stupid," she muttered.

"I'm sorry --!"

"Not you. Him."

"Do I keep holding this here?"

"Yeah, I guess so." Amy had an arm around Frank and looked like she didn't want to let go.

*

It seemed like hours, but by the clock on the wall was only a few minutes, before someone knocked heavily on the door. Amy, clutching the shotgun, had a quick exchange with whoever was on the other side, and then she opened the door and the room filled up with armed people in dark uniform jackets who didn't seem to want to identify what agency they worked for.

Marisol peeled her blood-sticky fingers off the soaked wad of her jacket, and found herself herded outside, into the small parking lot, where a hard-faced woman was barking orders and emergency lights flashed all over the place. Marisol lost sight of Amy and Frank, and after being briefly checked by a paramedic, she ended up in the back of a police car, shivering, wrapped in a blanket and clutching a thermos of coffee that someone had handed to her.

The car door slammed and the woman who'd been giving orders earlier slid in beside her.

"Are they okay?" Marisol's hands were still crusted with dried blood, sticking to the thermos when she moved her fingers.

"They will be," the woman said. "Why don't you tell me everything that happened here tonight. Everything."

It was difficult to sort out tonight's chaos into something coherent. Marisol's own mind kept playing tricks on her, jumping back and forth in time, forgetting details she was sure she'd known just a second ago. The female agent was patient, leading her through it, going back when she skipped ahead, and Marisol had gotten to the part about being attacked beside the pool when she glimpsed something that caught her eye. Frank was strapped to a gurney, with a couple of paramedics about to load him into the back of an ambulance.

"I'm sorry, I have to ..." and she slid out of the police car, shedding the blanket. 

She honestly wasn't even sure why she felt so urgently that she wanted to see him one more time. Somehow she knew -- knew down to her bones -- that after he vanished into the back of that ambulance, she'd never see him again. He would slip off into the night, just as he'd tried to do once before.

And she wanted to speak to him one more time. Even if she wasn't sure exactly why.

They'd just gotten him loaded up in the ambulance and were shutting the doors when she got there. "Wait!" she called. "Can I talk to him for a minute? Please?"

"Hi there, kid," Frank ground out, propping himself up on his elbow. He looked ghastly, and he _definitely_ should not be sitting up. The blanket over him was splotched with blood, and there was an IV in his arm.

"Hi," Marisol said, and then she found herself running aground on her own dazed weariness. She simply didn't know what to say.

Frank spoke first. "You held up good tonight. Sorry about all of this."

"It's ..." _Not your fault_ seemed a little too close to a lie. "It'll make a good story to tell my grandkids," she said, and Frank smiled briefly. 

And she thought about him lowering the gun, talking, buying her time. Thought about all the ways that could have gone, and how it had gone instead. She reached out and took his hand in her bloody one. He looked startled.

"It's not something I ever want to do again, mind you," she said. "But thanks. Thanks for saving my life."

Frank didn't seem to know what to say.

"Ma'am," one of the paramedics said, "you're going to have to leave."

Marisol nodded. As she started to let go, Frank unexpectedly squeezed her hand. And then she stepped down and stood watching the ambulance pull away. After a moment, the female agent -- whose name Marisol still hadn't caught -- appeared at her elbow and draped the blanket over her shoulders. 

*

The woman drove Marisol back to her apartment in Marisol's own car. When Marisol balked at getting out, the woman said, "It's safe."

"Are the police going to talk to me?"

"Maybe. You might be contacted in the next few days. In the meantime ..." The female agent smiled. It was a strange smile; it didn't touch her tired-looking eyes. "Go back to your life."

*

Marisol slept, took a bunch of aspirin, and then wrote off her classes for the next day or two. She cleaned up the bloody gauze and dish towels in the trash, and then scrubbed the blood stains out of her car. She was still nervous and jumpy even in broad daylight. She wondered if it would ever go away.

Her sleep was restless, filled with nightmares. She left Amy's room untouched (not that Amy's room ever _had_ been particularly lived-in looking) and wondered if she'd ever see either of them again.

But Amy showed up again three days later. Marisol didn't even know she was home until walking into the apartment to find Amy packing.

"Where are you going?"

Amy jumped and looked around. She looked underslept and was still wearing the same clothes she'd had on when Marisol last saw her. "I figured you'd want a new roommate after all of that."

"What I want is _answers._ Who's Frank? Who are you, really? _How_ is Frank?" And that was the thing worrying her most, she realized.

"He's okay," Amy said, smiling briefly. "As okay as he ever is. Listen, I'm just going to ... go."

"Or I could make us tea and you could tell me what happened. And," she added, "you owe me for the damage to the car. Those stains are _never_ coming out of the seats."

Amy hesitated. Then she smiled a little, put her backpack down, and came out to the living room.

"It started," she began, "with some photos."

*

They got a postcard a few weeks later. It had no names on it, and no message, just their address. Marisol picked it up when she picked up the mail. She turned it over and found a picture of the Statue of Liberty and a printed-on message that said _I <3 New York._

The lack of names made Marisol think it might be intended for both of them -- okay, mostly for Amy, but also for her. 

She slipped into Amy's room, and smiled to see that Amy had put the plant Marisol had bought for her up on the windowsill. It had a few shells around it, gathered from the beach. It wasn't much, but it made the room look a little more lived in, and a little less like a simple place to crash for someone who would be moving on very soon.

Marisol propped the card up against the plant's pot, where Amy would see it when she got home, and she left the room smiling quietly to herself. It occurred to her that she felt light, almost buoyant. It was _good_ to know that Frank was all right. And she really wouldn't mind seeing him again someday -- preferably minus the drug cartel. But knowing that he'd landed okay, and that he'd taken the time to tell them so ... that was worth a lot.

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt: _Frank Castle is injured, he tries to get to safety but passes out. When he wakes up his wounds are cleaned and patched up, he tries to quietly sneak out but walks into the one that took care of him, making them drop the plates of food they were carrying._
> 
> Since it sounded like you'd be okay with almost any caretaker, it seemed like a good prompt for an outside POV on Frank, which is something I've been hoping to write for awhile. I hope you like it!


End file.
